coerulea holobiont will advance our understanding of the mechanism of blue pigment synthesis, and will help answer why it is that only Heliopora coerulea retains a unique, blue, hard crystalline aragonite skeleton in the skeletal evolution of Octocorallia.

In contrast, in Hexacorallia, the sister class of Octocorallia, the free edge of the mesenteries is expanded into unilobed or trilobed mesenterial filaments, which typically feature gland cells and cnidae (Daly et al.

Nevertheless, this approach provides a methodological framework for phylogenetic analysis using sclerites, and insofar as these structures remain important diagnostic characters, it should be useful elsewhere in the Octocorallia.

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